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Post by ellen on Jun 12, 2014 12:32:19 GMT -5
Good morning, everyone. Diane, I do the same thing. I save all bugs, except roaches. I don't like to watch anything struggle and that was very kind of you to save the bee. I don't think they will sting you unless you actually pick them up with your hands or get too close to their nest. I have picked up honey bees with my hands that fall in the water troughs, but stopped doing that when I picked up a wasp in the water, and he stung me. Now I do like you did, and let them climb onto a stick. I spend a lot of time knocking little pill bugs off the paper I pick up and knocking spiders out of old yogurt cups. (I feed yogurt to the possums...hence a lot of yogurt cups.) My husband takes my bagged, non burnables and puts them in the dumpster where he ties up the boat. I make a fire every night from paper and wood to burn for the horses to keep mosquitoes away. I had so much energy yesterday...I was proud of myself because I got a lot done...not just the junk pile. Today...I am already zapped. My donkeys have decided they hate each other, so they must be kept separated. And by a good distance. I need to get them gelded, but it is $200 per donkey and I have three. It is really too hot to do it now....they have big blood vessels and they tend to bleed a lot. You don't want any extra stress on them. The past winter, and the winter before that, I didn't have the money. My husband didn't work from December 'til May so all my money went to feed the horses. They are all on "senior" feed, and it is very expensive. Anyway, this morning, I took Moses and tied him outside the pasture...which is my usual routine...while I fed the horses and the other donkeys. I tied Amos, the worst fighter, to the horse trailer to feed him. Got them fed, went to get Moses, and he is gone. I live at the end of a dead end road, so I went up the road to where it T's I turned to the left because I saw manure, so figured he might be down there. He wasn't. So I walked to the other end where it crosses a highway and keeps going for miles. There are no houses around...only a couple of ranches down that road. I heard him bray...way off in the distance, so started walking towards the first ranch. A car passed, and I flagged her down and asked her if she had seen a donkey...she hadn't. I kept walking until I could see an area around the first ranch house. Didn't see him so started back. I got halfway back to my road and I heard him bray and he didn't sound that far away. I turned around started back. I called him a couple of times. I don't know why it didn't dawn on me to call him earlier...probably because my mouth was like cotton...I hadn't planned this walk when I went out to get him. He actually came trotting down the highway, turned onto the road and came right to me. Got back and Amos, still tied to the trailer, was madder than a wet hen. I got Moses in a stall and put Amos and the mares back in what we call the night pasture. I was in no shape to referee donkey fights, and in there they can't get close to one another. So...all considered, I don't feel that bad, and I am going to go out and top off the water. Also need to give my bottle kitten a bottle, and then I am going to go out and tackle my junk pile. Diane, that kitty laying on the carrier is Bindi. Another one of my bottle babies. I am not sure how old she is...I named her after the crocodile guy's daughter...Bindi. Can't think of his name...too brain dead right now...Steve something. She was a kitten at the time he passed away.
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 12, 2014 19:16:26 GMT -5
Ellen, I'm so glad you found Moses. I've had enough trouble through the years with fighting cats, I can't imagine having to referee fighting donkeys!! I'm glad you have a fairly easy way to get rid of your garbage, it seems to be a huge problem for non-city dwellers. Ohblondie, congratulations on letting go of the clothes! Have you made a big dent in your stash? Diane
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 12, 2014 19:26:09 GMT -5
STEP!! I will re-start my Grid/Post-It System in an attempt to reclaim my kitchen.YAY! You can do it! If you divide the work into small enough pieces, they will become tiny little cute things instead of huge scary monsters. I'm going to go look at your thread right now. Diane
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Post by ellen on Jun 13, 2014 9:28:31 GMT -5
Diane, I jumped in without reading very much of this, and I want you to know I can relate to a lot of the things you wrote about your house. For years we lived in the "other house" with it only framed up inside. No walls. It was like living in a meat locker in the winter. Even in a "warm" climate, we have cold, wet winters. Or, cold to me. Now I am living in an unfinished house. When we started this, my husband had a good job, and then he got injured and was out of work for two years. He was a tow boat captain, but had only finished school four years previous...he went to school when he was 62 years old! We had no money to work on the house, and he was considered a seaman...so only got "seaman's pay" of $20 a day. Now he is shrimping again, and it is hit and miss. Anyway....have a lot to do...no functioning kitchen, for one thing. I did good yesterday. Even though I had that "nice little walk" that wore me out for awhile, I was able to get my five bags...actually more. I can see a difference but still have the big, heavy items to sort out and move. My husband is home this morning so won't get started until he goes to the boat this afternoon, but I hope my energy holds out and I can have another good day....at the junk pile.
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Post by ohblondie on Jun 13, 2014 11:09:54 GMT -5
Diane,
You know the theory...you make a dent in your pile then it "fluffs up" to occupy the space and it looks like nothing was done!!!!! I can actually see more of the floor now.....And I can see that it needs a good vacuum......
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 13, 2014 14:02:14 GMT -5
no functioning kitchen, for one thingEllen, yes, you do know what I'm talking about then. I've been without a functioning sink for so long, and have changed so much lately, that I really do think I could keep up with my dishes now if I could just have a sink with running water. I know that having a perfectly working kitchen wouldn't mean that I would magically keep it clean, but it surely would make it a lot easier! And compared to some of the other things I need done, I don't think a new kitchen sink would cost that much, unless they discover some new problems with the old pipes when they try to put it in. I think it's an attainable goal for me, someday--hopefully someday sooner rather than later. Ohblondie, I do indeed know how things "fluff up"--believe it or not, even books "fluff up"! Diane
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Post by ellen on Jun 13, 2014 23:10:54 GMT -5
Diane, I don't know if I've shown you these pictures before or not, but this is my house "before": This is after: You can't tell from the first picture, but the house is L shaped. After we got it, we added on, keeping the L shape but adding a sun porch and mud room/pantry. Believe it or not...I had wanted this house for 8 years. I have got to be crazy, no doubt. As bad as it looked, it still was a very sturdy, well built house, once you pared away all the rot. If you count the two rooms that make up the one bathroom...one room has the tub, the other adjoins and has shower and toilet...there are 11 rooms. I just hope we live long enough to finish it. And I hope my daughter wants it after we are gone. I have my doubts about both...living long enough to finish it, and my daughter wanting it. She lives in the city and she loves the city, but she could keep this house for a weekend place, if she would. It is only about 45 minutes away. I only got four bags today, but I am running out of "baggable" stuff. I only have about one bag left and then I will need to get down to the nitty gritty of the larger items and what to do with them. A few things I need to ask my husband if he wants to keep....and where he would like to keep them, because I want to clean most of this mess up. There is a stack of bricks that I won't move now because I don't have a better place to put them. At our old place, we had brick sidewalks in a herringbone pattern. The bricks were laid on a sand base and sand swept between the cracks. So, when we moved here, we took them up and brought them. I can't tell you how many times we have moved these bricks! Well, from the place where I got most of them...stacked them by the barn at the old place and then moved them back to the house and made the sidewalks. Took them up and stacked them back by the barn when we got ready to move. Stacked them here...and they are awaiting going back to sidewalks or flower bed edging. My husband said the next time we place them, he is going to cement them down. I said, "You can't do that...it would make it too hard to move them." I didn't do any waterlilies today. However, my friend who has the shop who sells them for me, said she has a lady who wants to buy several, so I will check into that tomorrow. That would be good. Well, going to look over the forum a little bit and call it a night. I will be back tomorrow to work on my project.
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Post by sidestep on Jun 14, 2014 9:54:56 GMT -5
Oh, ellen, what great pics of a neat old house & what an amazing job you guys have done! ~~~ ~~~
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Post by ellen on Jun 14, 2014 11:03:35 GMT -5
Thank you, Side Step. When it was first for sale (to be moved), I called about it and they wanted $40,000 for it. We had no money. Was told it had already sold, but it was never moved and it sat, cut in half, for 8 years. My husband got a good job and I called again and they said it was sold but the owner couldn't move it. To make a long story short, the guy who bought it had gone to prison. We ended up buying it for $15,000 and that included moving it 12 miles and putting it back together. I am going to work on my summer goal, but first I need to "put out a few fires" in here. When it cools off a little bit this evening, I will go out and work on my project.
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 14, 2014 17:47:47 GMT -5
Ellen, those pictures are amazing. I am drawn to old houses, old solid houses that have not been modernized except for having safe electrical and plumbing put in where necessary. They just have a million times more character than anything built today.
Diane
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Post by ellen on Jun 15, 2014 12:00:02 GMT -5
This cupboard was in a small room behind the kitchen. I guess it was the pantry. The kitchen was equally small, so we took out the wall that separated the two little rooms and enlarged the kitchen. We turned this cupboard around and put it on the back wall of the kitchen. When I took the picture, the room was so small I couldn't get the whole thing in the picture, but it has the same design across the top as it does the bottom. I would have loved to have put it in the dining room, but due to the position of the windows, there was no way to make it fit. That is the only change we made to the house, except for adding the sun room room and the pantry. It is such a nice old house, but I live mostly in one room of it. That is just crazy. It is my goal to get back to working on the house. We only have "small" things to do now. Well, they are small compared to what we have already done. Okay...I feel pretty good today, so I am getting ready to go out and work on my junk project. If I get too hot, I will come in here and find plenty to do, but the junk is mostly in the shade, so I should be able to make a dent in it today!
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 15, 2014 19:41:29 GMT -5
Beautiful cabinet Ellen, when you say it was in the pantry, that makes me think of novels about huge houses that had a butler's pantry--which held dishes, etc., instead of the actual food. That cabinet looks like it was meant for dishes, not food.
I have only one box left of fiction books to go through--I will try to get to it tonight.
Diane
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 15, 2014 21:18:09 GMT -5
Okay, I feel I have to correct something I said in my last post. I have most of my fiction books in boxes alphabetically by author's last name. When I said that I only had one box of fiction books to go through, I meant one more box of the ones alphabetized by author's last name. I neglected to mention the 3 boxes of anthologies that I have. They are actually in a different place in the room so I didn't even consider them part of this purge, but TECHNICALLY, they are part of my fiction books so I should go through those boxes also. So I won't consider the fiction books done until they are done too. When I first started keeping my books this way, I would just add another box when they outgrew the boxes I had. But now I feel they are taking up enough space. There will be no more boxes added. I'm proud to say that in this go-round, when I added books into the boxes, they had to fit. So for the boxes that were already full, I had to take out enough of what was already in there to make room for new ones I wanted to keep. This worked okay except for a couple of boxes--there were just a few very hard decisions. But I made them, and there were no additional boxes added. Nonfiction will be the nightmare though, I don't know if I'm capable of getting rid of the number of books I'll need to in order to keep the storage space the same. Diane
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Post by lucie on Jun 16, 2014 2:30:53 GMT -5
Diane! you managed to keep your books in aloted boxes. When it comes to non-ficton, it might be easier then you think, many informations outdate very fast. Of course I do not know what kind of non-fiction you have.
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Post by dtesposito on Jun 16, 2014 9:31:25 GMT -5
Thank you Lucie, it really is a big deal for me to keep the books within a particular space, this is something I would never even have considered before about a year ago. AND, I have another success to report. I really hadn't planned to look at those anthology books I mentioned in my last post, but decided to do those also so all fiction could be accounted for. I actually had 3 boxes plus about 10 extras sitting on top--I managed, in just one hour, to look through all of them and reduce it to 2 boxes. I'm getting rid of 33 books, just like that. I looked at each book and thought about how I would feel if I was forced to read this book NEXT, before any other books. Any book I didn't feel excited about reading next went onto the give away pile.
So now I can say that fiction books are done, and that category can be crossed off my summer goal list!
Diane
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